Violent protests have ravaged cities throughout India since last December, when the national parliament passed a bill amending the 1955 citizenship law.
This has prompted Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation tied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party, to launch counter-demonstrations.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 envisages fast-tracking citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who had fled from neighbouring Muslim countries before 2015. However, given that Muslims themselves were not covered by the law, it has triggered a strong backlash among members of India's Muslim community.
India is home to 11 percent of the global Muslim population, or about 201 million people. For comparison's sake, the population of neighbouring Muslim-majority Pakistan was estimated to be 197 million in 2018 and the Muslim population of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, is estimated at 225 million. Nevertheless Muslims in India only represent about 14 percent of the total population.
Many Indian Muslims contend that the amendments violated the constitution by oppressing a group of citizens in a formally secular country on religious grounds. The new citizenship law is closely linked to the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was introduced under the current BJP-led national government of Narendra Modi to tighten the screws on citizenship in India, which is expected to surpass China to become the world's most populous country within five years.
